Tuesday, August 9, 2011

Frankly, it feels like lawsuits are taking too much of our time and mind space lately – and they aren’t fun to think about. So here’s a roundup of the more exciting lawsuits news of the last hour:

MacRumors:

A class-action lawsuit has been filed against Apple and 5 of the 6 major book publishers, alleging they “colluded to increase prices for popular e-book titles to boost profits and force e-book rival Amazon to abandon its pro-consumer discount pricing.”On Lodsys (important if you are a App developer with an auto-updating app):

Apple insists to intervene in Lodsys lawsuit against app developers. Apple still requests a court hearing on its motion. Things may still take some more time, but there will be no more written pleadings unless the court asks the parties to address particular questions in more detail. At this stage it’s possible that the court decides very quickly, and I continue to be reasonably optimistic that Apple’s motion will be granted.At some point, we should start referring to Lodsys by the name of its parent company, Intelectual Ventures.

Apple passed Exxon today to become the most valuable company on earth. The excitemnt only lasted a few hours until the market rally at the end of the day put Exxon back on top, however. But, that didn’t stop people wondering: What’s next for Apple?

Enter Robert Cyran, Columnist for Reuters, who doesn’t understand why Apple isn’t headed straight towards being the first $1Trillion company.

Apple’s sales have been surging 80 percent a year, and its profit faster. What’s more, it trades roughly in line with the growing stock market — and at less than half the price-to-earnings multiple it fetched in 2006, when revenue growth was much slower. Apple now trades at about 11 times estimated earnings for the fiscal year ending September 2012. The Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index is valued at about 10 times next year’s profit. But Apple’s sales growth is nearly 10 times faster than that of the average company. Apple also holds $76 billion of cash and investments.So, what’s the deal? Apple, if put on the same P/E multiple it traded on in 2006, would be worth $900 billion.

Facebook isn’t fantastic at hiding secret stuff in their Apps. Just last month, its iPad ambitions were outed by some folks rummaging around in the App. Today, Facebook released their Messenger app and seconds later, we see that there is a video component to the application:

The video component would seem to work on both Android (yep) and iPhone and would likely tie in with their recently announced Skype desktop video conferencing service as well. The code looks very rudimentary at this point so it isn’t certain that the video can be enabled like the iPad version was with just a few tweeks. Thanks Caleb!

Facebook has released Facebook Messenger which is an extension of Facebook’s Messages service and will allow you to send a text message to your phone’s contacts and a Facebook message to your Facebook contacts. Bonus: You get to send pictures as well.

The app obviously competes with Apple’s iMessage, Blackberry messenger and all of the other silo-ed messaging apps out there but with a user base of 700 million+, it is well positioned to be a contender.

Messenger is available in both the iTunes App Store and Android Market and is based off the Beluga technology which the company recently acquired. With all the Google+ noise of late we’ve forgotten about Facebook’s assault on mobile. They’re back.

We’re getting images in from around the UK of Apple Stores having removed their inventory after closing of business. The concern is the ongoing riots that have plagued London and now the greater UK for the past 3 days.

Above: Due To The Riots In England, The Apple Store In Liverpool One have moved all stock up stairs from the show floor.Even resellers are getting into the action. Canterbury, Kent, below: